Adam Michell

Personality Test

2011-02-06T15:16:00.000-08:00

I took a fairly quick personality test...here are the results.

Openness: Imaginative and creative, also prone to boredom and strive to feed their mind continually with new ideas and experiences.

Conscientiousness: Laid back, find it easy to enjoy life, but may need a help in hand when it comes to self discipline.

Extroversion: Energized by the company of others, evening types and motivated more by carrots than the stick.

Agreeableness: Not very, very agressive and competitive, bloom in situations that require tough thinking and straight talking...(sometimes).

Neuroticism: More relaxed, less emotional, less prone to distress and operate in situations that others may find stressful.

Job Hunting

2011-01-24T13:59:00.000-08:00

Having a degree in innovation and creativity, I always want to break the rules or bend them here and there..

BUT

Being young and trying to do this, does this get you anywhere? I may need to change my approach, play the game for a while until I can be more influential. Currently I feel what I say has no respect, even if I quote top ground breaking research it still has no effect...

London Trip

2011-01-24T13:55:00.000-08:00

So this weekend was a trip to London, having a last night out with Dad & Jackie before their return to San Francisco. Didn't get up to much trouble, a quiet night with Stu on Saturday and then a trip to Camden & Angel on Sunday. To be honest I had a few drinks and felt the effects this morning!

Idea: Social Website

2011-01-21T02:47:00.000-08:00

Have this great idea for a website! To Blog it or not? will I ever do it? Maybe I should create some test subjects and see how effective it is. Its a social site....tracker is my trigger word.

Get ready to be Creative!

2011-01-20T15:50:00.000-08:00

Brainstorming does not work does not generate original ideas, according to research.
Working on your own is better for creating ideas, you work harder.

Get ready to be Creative

1.Priming Your Mind
Work on the problem vigorously, then go and chill out by immersing yourself with ideas. Take a trip to a museum, listen to music, look over the internet. Don't let your concious solve anything, leave it to your subconscious to make new connections.

2.Perspective
Change your perspective, it helps provide novel solutions and a wider variety of ideas. Imagine being a child, a health and safety expert, a business man, an artist. Use analogies and see if the solution in an "is like" situation can be applied to your problem.

3. Play
Being too serious will constrain the brain. Go and be silly, play some pranks or whatever you find funny.

4. Perceive
Ask some interesting questions each work, stop taking the world for granted and missing things right under your nose. Why are bananas yellow? What makes us laugh?

5. Go Green
Evolution psychologists have studies showing being surrounded by green helps us relax and be more creative.

6.Visual Priming

Communication

2011-01-20T05:49:00.001-08:00

Need to convert to Video! Not to worry as HD camera has been ordered and will arrive soon ;)

Knowledge...lost its value?

2011-01-20T05:41:00.000-08:00

Knowledge these days has surely lost its value.

I find when chatting with an older generation...they argue about facts and create wasteful debates that cause arguments. Then I'll shut them up in two minutes with a quick google search on my iPhone.

I was reading in the paper that the internet is effecting our memory. Due to the amount of information, we no longer store things long term and the short term area of the brain is increasing.

Experience surely has to be power? Or the character of someone has to be power?
I've recently graduated and in some student debt, and realised now I can actually have the information to whatever I want if I have the drive to find it. So university is mostly about character building and experience and a piece of paper! However, obviously some courses do give access to special facilities and require qualified staff.

How does a person have value....what life skills do we really need to teach in school?

My point i'm really making behind the scenes, do schools teach anything these days that has any value? Are you just being a parrot, or are you getting taught how to thinking differently, how to make decisions, how to debate, how to handle relationships, how to be creative, how to be motivated...?

I personally would rather have lessons in these that will really benefit me, rather than learn about something that has no relevance. I did enjoy school, but who decides that it should be part of the syllabus to study parts of subjects? With the social culture now, surely gaming or social networking should be studied? Maybe there should be a study what you want class?

I am a keen follower of Sir Ken Robinson, and I would highly recommend his talks on TED about how education kills creativity.

Creativity tests...are they flawed?

2011-01-20T05:22:00.000-08:00

So creativity tests such as...how many things can you do with this paper clip?

The rules of judging need to be looked at.

Just because you can think of a lot of ideas, maybe even varied ideas doesn't really make you creative? All the ideas may be worthless and have zero value. I know the philosophy is "the higher amount of ideas, the higher probability that there will be some good ones". Surely once someone knows the technique, anyone can cheat this by having a simple check list? Then the ideas are plentiful but possibly not original? Can we get the concious to be more creative?

So when you are given creativity tests...I am inclined to say it may need time to come up with original ideas.

Information needs to be digested and the sub-concious needs time to process them. My best ideas come out at night, after a full day of looking at stuff and when my concious mind is relaxed. Once relaxed, my sub-concious just throws waves or original ideas on the paper, its such a rush I often look forward to getting in bed!

So which is better...

Concious Creativity
Sub-concious Creativity

Thinking

2011-01-20T05:08:00.000-08:00

So I'd call myself a bit of a deep thinker, maybe a big thinker at times and a lateral thinker.
I love the whole subject of thinking...how we think, different kinds of thinking, influencing thinking.

Where could thinking get me?

Well it could get me in a mess by doing to much thinking and not enough doing. Mostly it results in an overwhelming ammount of ideas coming through at night just as I get into bed! Kind of annoying, but its a bit of a rush. I'm training myself to do it during the day, but a lot of the idea generation I see seems to be forced and not very creative..

DDR3 RAM Test

2011-01-19T08:38:00.000-08:00

Post Delivery

2011-01-19T07:47:00.000-08:00

Nice post day today, where I received 3 letters:

1.New iPhone 4 updated sim card after a nice call to Vodafone about their signal

2.Shiney new bank card to look nice in my wallet, and never move...

3. Some DDR3 RAM taking my comp up to a total of 8GB. Time to test it out with some 3ds max rendering!

Also just watched the Social Network, having a bed ridden day after damaging my back in the gym last night. Struggling to walk but quite inspired to do some work after watching that film.

Art Foundation Sketchbook

2011-01-18T16:25:00.000-08:00

Some memories of my year at Blackpool & The Fylde College

Open publication - Free publishing - More sketching

A Level Sketchbook

2011-01-18T12:46:00.000-08:00

Having a little walk down memory lane, found some old work from my A-Levels at Hutton Grammar School.

Open publication - Free publishing - More sketching

Dads Visit

2011-01-17T14:38:00.000-08:00

Dad has visited the good old Preston town again. Had a nice catch up, looking through some pictures of trips around the US. Need to get them all scanned in and mapped out in some kind of Life Chart Application...

Does this exist?

Portfolio Construction

2011-01-17T05:36:00.000-08:00

Not posted in a while, I'm on a bit of a mission to get my portfolio done. I've been planning it out, and so far I am thinking of showing:

Packaging Visualising

Standardised Packaging

Concept Design

Would love to get into a creative ideas role at an advertising agency, or doing packaging design. Something with ideas ;)

MY FIRST TRAINER SKETCH

2009-08-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

I wanted to get sketching trainers straight away. To get the proportions right I started off using underlays, also it will help train my arm.

I would say I need to free up a bit more, introduce more line weights and keep looking at some nice forms.

FOOTWEAR DESIGN

2009-08-25T13:00:00.000-07:00

This is a really exciting new interest, of mine I mean I have always loved trainers but never seriously gave any thought to designing them.

So i'm starting on a journey, beginning by reading through all the posts on Core 77 in the footwear design section.

Why Footwear?

I'm such an active person, so footwear naturally is a product I spend a lot of time interacting with. I'm into all kinds of sports, mostly athletics, football and golf. Maybe a good way to introduce myself is by showing what weapons i'm using at the moment:

PD & Development

2009-08-10T04:09:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Economic success of most firms comes from identifying the needs of customers, creating products quickly and at low cost.

Definition of Product Development:

Product development is a set of activities beginnning with the perception of a market opportunity and ending in the production, sale and delivery of a product.

Characteristics of Successful PD:

This results in products which can be produced and sold profitably, characteristics include:
Product Quality, Product Cost, Development Time, Development Costs, Development Capability

Duration & Cost of PD

Few products can be developed in less than one year, this makes me slightly worried as my final year is only 9 months. As well as only having a one man internal team.
At least this will keep costs down, as cost is roughly proportional to the number of people on the project team and the duration of the project. It would be sensible to design a simpler product well, than to do a complicated product badly.

Challenges of PD
Trade Offs: For example changing a material might improve function but increase costs. Trade-offs need to be recognized, understood and managed in a way that maximised the success of the product.

Dynamics: Tech improves, markets change, customers evolve....it's all forever changing.

Details: Developing a product with the mildest complexity may require thousands of decisions...snap fits, screw fits, tolerances, materials....

Time: Decisions must be made quickly without complete info.